


perhaps these new gods will

by salazarastark



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-28 15:43:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17185817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salazarastark/pseuds/salazarastark
Summary: Elia stands before the weirwood tree, staring right into those red eyes that seem to watch her every move. Tomorrow, she will marry her second husband underneath these red leaves, in this snow.After the war, Elia marries Ned and comes to term with all that happened to her.





	perhaps these new gods will

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kgathp](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kgathp/gifts).



Elia stands before the weirwood tree, staring right into those red eyes that seem to watch her every move. Tomorrow, she will marry her second husband underneath these red leaves, in this snow.

There is a part of her that wants to cry, but she knows if she does that, she will never stop. She will never stop mourning her baby boy or Rhaella, or the loss of Viserys and the good-sister that were spirited far away in Essos. She even finds herself missing Rhaegar, in the moments when this new life becomes too much and she misses having  _ someone _ to depend on, even if it was someone who was not very dependable.

She still has Rhaenys with her, is still able to look at her daughter and know, deep down, that there is still some good in this world, but sometimes, and how Elia hates herself for feeling this, it’s not enough.

Not when there’s so much else she’s lost.

Elia closes her eyes. She doesn't feel like she has lost her staring contest with the weirwood tree, but in truth, that perhaps she’s won it. The Seven failed to protect her.

Perhaps these new gods will.

*

Elia is unsure about Ned Stark. For a leader of the rebellion, he is by far the best in her eyes. He is the one who backed up her suggestion that Jaime Lannister go to the Wall for his crime, because she does not know what Aerys was trying to do, but she knows it must have horrid for that eager boy to go against his king and she does not see why his entire life must be thrown away. He is one who saved her daughter, who saved  _ her _ when the Mountain had thrown her son against a wall and was raping her as she screamed and cried and was being stained with the blood of her son. He is the one who convinced Robert Baratheon to let Rhaenys come to Winterfell for Elia to raise her before a marriage, rather than being trapped at King’s Landing like what was being talked about before Ned Stark walked into the meeting.

He is the brother of Lyanna Stark, the woman that Rhaegar started this entire thing for. Oh she knows it might be unfair to hate that girl, but she has not yet figured out how to hate Rhaegar yet and this rage must go somewhere. She alternates between a stoic calmness and a raging fire, so much hatred at what has had to happen to her family bottled up inside of her, with nowhere to go and then forced to boil over.

Ned Stark is a good man, a kind man. He is handsome. Elia remembers gossiping with Ashara over all the men they had seen at Harrenhal, judging each and every one of them solely on their looks. Ashara had thought that Brandon was the handsomest Stark brother, but Elia had thought that was Ned. There was something so kind about his eyes that if she was an unmarried woman, she would not have been able to resist. Yet she still finds herself unable to trust him.

There was once a time that she found Rhaegar attractive too.

Now, his eyes carry a great sadness as a companion to that kindness and she can’t bear the thought of a man’s touch because of Gregor Clegane. And that’s not the only part of her that feels stuck in horror and grief. Ashara and Brandon are both gone and their child too, all taken from this world too soon, and the only thing Elia prays about anymore is that they will take care of Aegon until Elia can see him somewhere that is not her nightmares, with a head that is not beaten in and ruined, something that does not cause her to scream awake at night.

Elia does not want to marry again, does not see the need. She is a barren woman in the thoughts of everyone who matters, and is a useless piece in the game of chess that Westeros plays. Ned Stark does not need to be saddled with a wife such as her, but due to machinations of Jon Arryn, somehow he is.

He has a bastard son, though he’s legitimized by Robert Baratheon now. He’s the sweetest thing, named Jon, and one night, when Elia couldn’t go back to sleep, not when her heart was racing and her palms were sweaty and she just wanted to be out of that room.

She found her way into Winterfell’s nursery, smoothed away Rhaenys’s hair from her face as her daughter slept, still innocent enough to sleep peacefully. Next to her is Balerion, who hasn’t left her side since that horrid day in King’s Landing. They’re always together, usually by Ned’s indulgent side, who Rhaenys has come to adore as her savior.

Oh how Elia wishes she could feel the same.

Before she had left, she had heard the shuffle of a baby, and for a moment, she had wanted to bolt from that room. She had actually found herself by Rhaenys’s bed and then her hand on the doorknob, no recollection from in between. But then she heard Jon’s little sounds of waking, and she forced herself to turn around, to walk towards the crib.

She had found a baby, still smaller than Aegon, with brown hair and big gray eyes. He looks at her and smiles, and Elia is gone. She picks up the baby, and holds him close. He smells different from Aegon, but he also smells like baby paradoxically enough. She sits in a chair and rocks him for the rest of the night.

She falls asleep at some point in the moonlight, and for the first time, she sleeps with peace.

*

She and Ned are married underneath the weirwood tree. Elia feels the wind biting her face, sees her new husband’s compassionate eyes, and she so desperately wants to tell him to stop looking at her with such sweet kindness. Elia has learned how to live with an unconcerned husband, and she doesn’t think she could bear living with one who does care about her. Elia has pieced together armor around her heart, cobbled together from whatever she could find. She does not what will happen to her once she let’s those defenses down, she does not want to know. The thought of caring for someone that is not Rhaenys is a thought too horrible to contemplate.

The most she allows herself is sneaking into the nursery to hold Jon, bastard son of her husband he may be.

Her first husband that is.

Ned does not bring it up to her, does not want to tell her. Elia understands the feeling, but she is no fool and one day she will tell her new husband that. She hears the rumors about Ashara, but she knows that Ashara’s daughter was also Brandon Stark’s. She knows of rumors of women tumbled late one night, but she does not think Ned Stark would strike a mother’s name from her son’s life unless there was good reason.

Robert Baratheon and Tywin Lannister are good reasons.

Elia finds herself a hard woman nowadays, but not a cruel one. She will not let herself be responsible for a child’s death, no matter who his parents are. She will make sure Jon is taken care of, raised how a future Lord of Winterfell should be, as she doubts that she can give Ned any children.

(She had lied to Rhaegar about not being able to have more, just wanting some time to enjoy her children rather than immediately getting pregnant with the third head. But oh, how she wishes she had told the truth. Her death then would be so much better than all the death that had followed.)

(But she does think she can have a child, especially since her new husband does not want to bed her, not unless she tells she wants him, and Elia does not know if she ever will.)

Elia does not find herself loving Jon yet. The wounds that Rhaegar and Lyanna split upon her skin are still too fresh. But she sees herself loving him one day, and that thought scares her more than words can ever say.

She still visits him every night.

*

It is after one late night visit that she fucks her husband for the first time.

That’s vulgar word, but she can think of no other description for it, cannot think of another way to say the anger and frustration she took out on his body, the scratches and bites she left on his skin, the way she cried like a child in his arms afterwards, missing her son so much and feeling the terror of love wash down upon her, knowing that soon she will be forced to care and give and live in this world again, the world that has taken so much from her. She know that it’s giving so much to her, and all of this it can take away.

*

She gets use to coldness of Winterfell. She gets used to her husband and her step-son (no matter how you look at it, that’s what he is, isn’t he?). She gets too used to Rhaenys’s voice sounding more and more Northern every day.

She never gets used to not having her Aegon in her arms.

She does not know how to get used to her growing stomach.

She thinks about drinking some milk of the poppy, but then decides against it. This child could kill her, for just because she could have had that third child and still live is not a guarantee, but Elia finds herself not caring about that fact. It’s been long enough since Aegon, enough that her body has healed, and besides, whether she lives or dies, she will be at least one of her children. Ned looks at her with those sad, kind eyes, and looks at her with the question if she really wants this in her eyes. She refuses the entertain the notion that she doesn’t, moves out of the bed whenever he tries to talk about it. The only time she stays is when her child begins to kick, and she wants Ned to feel them. He often falls asleep with his hand on her stomach, a soft smile on his lips.

Rhaegar never did that.

Her child’s birth is full of pain and screaming and brief flashes of those she’s known and left behind. When it’s over, however, she’s alive and holding her newborn child in her arms.

Sansa is small and perfect and Elia cries when she holds her, at all the feelings inside her.

She cries even more when she sees Ned hold their daughter.

Rhaegar never looked like that.

And when Rhaenys and Jon join them later?

Oh, how Elia missed feeling.

**Author's Note:**

> I hoped you like this fic! I had a fun time writing it, and I hoped you enjoyed reading it. I want to thank afewreelthoughts for her great help in betaing this fic. :)


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